


Before, before, before

by WahlBuilder



Category: Legacy of Kain
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, let them rest, they are so tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21557644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Sorting through changing memories isn't new for Kain. What is new is that he is not alone anymore.
Relationships: Kain/Raziel (Legacy of Kain)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Before, before, before

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write LoK story for _years_. Now look at me.  
> #itried

Kain felt that regardless of how many times it happened, no living being, adjusted to moving through time in a linear fashion, could acquire mundane familiarity with that event—a shift of time, not only as though in place: a moment—there, now—here,—but now, a shift of _history_ also, already having being experienced by them. Not even like a dream—the foggier mechanics fading away, replaced by new reality of the waking world, with only a taste, a detail lingering in the back of one’s mind, a motif that repeated once in a few nights and etched itself into that mind deeper than the rest through simple repetition. No, it was not so—it had his own routine, it was as though parchment being scraped away and written over with new inks—but what had been there, lingered in its fullness, the matter of the page itself forever a witness until time destroyed it down to the latest shred.

He was new and old and new again; it was a pain the likes of which he hadn’t known and couldn’t compare; a pain of being scoured and shaped again. Perhaps he was mad through its action indeed, in ways that bore connection to matters of mystery and magic only in so much that those matters were the cause and the means through which this madness occurred in him.

It was a work for days ahead: to take the finest sieve and put apart those tangled timelines in his own head, to pry away what had been new in his own character from what had been—before, now gone from the very fabric of the world save from his own mind, save for…

_‘I’m here. Kain.’_

But now, he wasn’t alone. He would not do it as he had necessarily done it before—in total solitude to try and preserve his sanity, as much as that could be done for any time traveller. To sieve and berate himself in privacy of space and silence, for new mistakes of his younger days.

No, he wasn’t alone now.

_‘I’m here.’_

He felt it with his whole being: a kindness he did not earn but which was given to him freely—like the ultimate sacrifice that had restored the world. Restored Kain himself, in ways he could not dare to explore—for now, at very least.

_‘You have never been tainted. Not in the way you think.’_

He leaned on the wall, looking over his tormented world—the world he had—would, would have—tormented. ‘I took and took and took. Caught in the clutches of the fate—but I will not rescind the burden of my will, the guilt of choice. Look at our land, my Raziel,’ he said, and gestured around—and he knew that in some way, his Raziel did look. Through Kain himself, perhaps—the veil had been lifted from Raziel’s eyes, as it had been from Kain’s too many times.

_‘I’m looking: there is hope. In it. In you. For you.’_

He sighed. The race was over, for the time—what future held, he did not know, but as he would find himself, a thread of the past related to this world, he would set up on yet another scheme. The threats were many—and he was the Guardian still.

_‘Not now. Rest.’_

‘I have spent so much time idling by, waiting for you. Thinking.’

_‘And now I’m here. Rest. We can rest, for now.’_

Perhaps, he still was mad in that prosaic way—perhaps, his madness was complete. The voice of Raziel—his first, forever his,—was in his head and all around him, and yet not just quite like a whisper, a lover’s gentle words on the cusp of morning hour. It was a part of Kain—just like his blood had been a part of Raziel, once.

_‘And more than once.’_

‘Whelp,’ he chuckled.

It seemed, this madness had returned him to a better time—a better memory of sorts.

_‘I am not merely a memory.’_

‘I know,’ he said. The sword lay across his lap; where it used to be cold, exhuming intent, a hunger, but devoid of awareness guiding that intent, restraining that hunger,—now, was a presence, warmth, and one Kain had not allowed himself to miss for eons.

‘There is a place,’ he said after a while as clouds gathered heavy over their land, ‘or was, or—is—’ He clutched at his head.

 _‘Rest, Kain.’_ A wave of comfort washed over him—like water used to be, long time ago, and flame, and gentle hand—his pasts a tangle of what was and what could be and what had never been, no more,—loops, loops of thread thrown over him, one and another and another, constricting until his very body ached, his bones issued a groan…

A touch dispelled the waking nightmare—but he didn’t turn. Afraid to see—and to not see as well. That touch did linger—like a mist, a dream, a wisp, like rain—as it had been—before, before.

‘There _is_ a place,’ he said—he needed to, the memory among those that were still a strange and tangled mess of lines, their inks still fresh. ‘A prison for those most abhorrent—but a place of nightmares, that is, or was, or always has it been. Sadistic torment for some wretched souls, their minds long broken, spirit drained—yet body lingers through the influence unknown. Some magic or device—Time-hopping bastard had a hand in its devisement, I am sure. That place… Perhaps, for me.’

The touch that was like the mists had been—before, before, before—a lover’s hand at nightmare’s cold-sweat grip, stroking away, soothing away. _‘What is this melancholic mood? You, turning mellow into your old age? Did Vorador pass the mantle of hopelessness to you?’_

The taunt and challenge were a shroud of mist, all on their own—a back-and-forth, not like the string of accusations of the recent fights, but like—before, before, before.

They used to be.

And now, they were…

_‘As were before. I told you, did I not?’_

The touch was like a touch around his shoulders, and the weight of his first’s chin, the softness, cold like marble, of his cheek pressed right to Kain’s.

‘You did, my whelp.’ Kain stroked the sword—but it felt as though Raziel was not in it, however bound to it, but right beside him.

As before, indeed.

‘Perhaps, I’m getting mellow. In him, I saw myself once—what I could have just become—but maybe what I felt my fate would be, was not the monster I had glimpsed, but as an ancient, burdened with my loss, and my defeat, and everything I loved—but not enough; and all I failed to protect.’

 _‘You are not him,’_ his Raziel said, the touch now ever gentle, like a soothing breeze. _‘Your defeats—’_

‘Define me not—I know. Perhaps we could now rest here. You and I—as once we used to do.’

_‘Before, before, before.’_


End file.
